A Dog Story (1992)

A 3½ year old denizen of this city, my Tibetan Terrier Harrigan, on our customary midnight walks, has learned who belongs on his streets versus that which is alien. He passes countless curbside trash cans, cardboard cartons and garbage bags (tied into two little bunny ears) with little more than his normal canine curiosity. Even tumbleweed plastic bags blowing down the street and garbage-rifling bottle-redeeming homeless people no longer faze him.

Among the silent apparitions which, by contrast, have deservedly prompted a sudden round of baying were:

1. A 15-Foot-Tall Yellow Ditch-Digging Machine Towering Dinosaur-Like, Asleep in the Street
   
2. An Abandoned, Shadeless and Extraordinarily Hideous Table Lamp, Awaiting Its Next Owner
   
3. A Suzanne Somers Thighmaster

I am prepared to control his natural instincts to attack at the appearance of dogs three times his bulk or the occasional aggressive feral cat. But on a particularly quiet evening I was startled by the alarm he raised at beings unknown ahead. My New York nerves screamed "Mugger Alert!" What hooded figure was about to jump out from between the parked cars or dark stoops?

I followed Harry's lead cautiously as the leash sang with tension and we approached the threat. Rising from the curb 20 yards ahead, amid the normal refuse, was an empty Gateway 2000 Computer carton. (In order to convey their South Dakotan origins, Gateway uses white boxes printed with irregular black spots, cow-fashion.) Harry knew that this cubist black and white animal he had never seen before and it certainly was not native to his New York.

I praised his vigilance, then let him come to terms with the spotted box (in enviable expressiveness) and add it to his roster of the rare, but benign.

This has been an absolutely true story.

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I am proud to say that this was actually published in the September 1997 issue of "Animal Tales", the magazine of the Humane Society of Prince Edward Island, Canada.